JFK told Khrushchev's son-in-law
in 1962 US "will not meddle" with Cuba, While Joint
Chiefs planned pretexts for invasion and RFK ran Mongoose

Cuban government declassifies
threat estimates on US and defense plans.

Havana, Cuba, 11 October 2002, 1 p.m. - During the first
session of the historic 40th anniversary conference on the Cuban
missile crisis, participants including Cuban president Fidel
Castro and former US secretary of defense Robert McNamara discussed
newly declassified documents showing that US president John
F. Kennedy, in meetings with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's
son-in-law Adzhubei in January 1962, compared the US failure
at the Bay of Pigs to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.
JFK also assured Adzhubei that the US "will not meddle"
with Cuba, but at the same time, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
were preparing "cover and deception plans" that included
planned pretexts for a US invasion of Cuba. The President's
brother, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, simultaneously
was leading discussions with the CIA and Pentagon about covert
operations (codenamed Operation Mongoose) on the proposition
that "a solution to the Cuban problem today carries 'the
top priority in the United States government .'"

In prepared remarks released today, former secretary of defense
McNamara posed 13 key questions to the participants, and explained
why he came to Havana, "having already attended five previous
conferences on the crisis": "I want to learn more
about nuclear danger in October 1962 - about the factors that
led to it, about the reasons we escaped the ultimate consequences
in the events, about what might have happened but thankfully
did not, and about whether, or how, the lessons learned from
the missile crisis might assist those of us who are interested
in reducing the risk of nuclear catastrophe in the 21st century."

The conference is meeting at the Palacio de Convenciones
in Havana, Cuba. Most participants are housed at the Hotel Palco
next door. Phone: 011-53-7-337235. Fax: 011-53-7-337236. The
conference room itself is closed to the press but the organizers
are holding daily press briefings each afternoon summarizing
the discussion and releasing key documents addressed that day.

The National Security Archive co-organized with Cuban institutions
the highly successful 40th anniversary Bay of Pigs conference
last year in Havana; this year, the Archive is also working
in partnership with Brown University's Watson Institute. Peter
Kornbluh directs the Archive's Cuba project.

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